GFI Software Announces Top 10 Malware Threats for August
By Giselle Borg Olivier on September 3, 2010 – 10:32 am | No Comment

GFI Software Announces Top 10 Malware Threats for August
The top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of August are:
1. Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT 25.11%
2. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen 4.23%
3. Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra 3.61%
4. INF.Autorun (v) 3.27%
5. Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 …

Read the full story »
Tech Zone

Technical info for IT professional and network administrators.

MSP Insights

Information for IT support providers, Value Added Resellers (VARs) and the MSP Market.

GFI Fixes It

Key insights from our Customer Support team on GFI’s products.

SME Zone

Current tech issues, research and articles, tailor-made for the SME!

GFI World

Latest GFI announcements, news and updates.

Headline, SME Zone »

GFI Software Announces Top 10 Malware Threats for August
Written by Giselle Borg Olivier on September 3, 2010 – 10:32 am | No Comment
GFI Software Announces Top 10 Malware Threats for August
The top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of August are:
1. Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT 25.11%
2. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen 4.23%
3. Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra 3.61%
4. INF.Autorun (v) 3.27%
5. Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 2.01%
6. BehavesLike.Win32.Malware (v) 1.04%
7. Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) 0.96%
8. Trojan.Win32.Malware.a 0.93%
9. Trojan.Win32.Meredrop 0.92%
10. Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) 0.84%
The report is compiled from monthly scans performed by our award-winning anti-malware solution, VIPRE® Antivirus, and its antispyware tool, CounterSpy®, and is a service of GFI Labs™.
GFI VIPRE ThreatNet™ statistics for the month of August show that our customers were under attack primarily by the same Trojan horse programs that have persisted for several months.
In fact, the top four threats were unchanged in order from July.  Trojans detected as Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT were still the chief detection, slightly down to 25.11 percent of total detections.  This particular Trojan detection has been in the top spot for some time: in July with 29.08 percent and in June with 27.16 percent of the total detections.
The number two detection, Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen is a detection of password-stealing Trojans with many versions. The third largest detection, Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra, is a generic detection for a variety of malware that can infect 32- and 64-bit Windows installations.
“Detections of this malicious code indicate that botnet operators continue to try to infect machines and use them in their spamming networks,” said Francis Montesino, manager of the malware processing team, GFI Labs. “Our ThreatNet detections for the month also agree with other reports we’ve heard in the last few weeks that have found a high level of traffic in rogue security products. These are often referred to as scareware. We’re seeing a multitude of detections of the downloaders and installers that are associated with the rogues.
Montesino continued, “Our research group is analyzing new rogues too, but what we’re seeing through ThreatNet indicates that VIPRE is preventing these rogue downloads.”
The top 10 results represent the number of times a particular malware infection was detected during VIPRE and CounterSpy scans that report back to ThreatNet, GFI’s community of opt-in users. These threats are classified as moderate to severe based on method of installation among other criteria established by GFI Labs. The majority of these threats propagate through stealth installations or social engineering.
About GFI Labs
GFI Labs, formerly known as SunbeltLabs, specializes in the discovery and analysis of dangerous vulnerabilities (i.e., security holes, bugs, maligned features or combination of operations) that could be exploited for Internet and email attacks. The research team actively researches new malware outbreaks, creating and testing new threat definitions on a constant basis.

The top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of August are:

  1. Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT 25.11%
  2. Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen 4.23%
  3. Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra 3.61%
  4. INF.Autorun (v) 3.27%
  5. Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 2.01%
  6. BehavesLike.Win32.Malware (v) 1.04%
  7. Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) 0.96%
  8. Trojan.Win32.Malware.a 0.93%
  9. Trojan.Win32.Meredrop 0.92%
  10. Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) 0.84%

Read the full story »

Common reasons why content updates fail in GFI MailEssentials (Part 2 of 3)
Written by Mohammed S Ali on September 2, 2010 – 10:19 am | No Comment
Common reasons why content updates fail in GFI MailEssentials (Part 2 of 3)

In my last post I performed some pre-checks to identify the reason for the update failure. I found out that the update fails permanently, the license key is however valid and the licensed users have …

Pangea Supercontinent finish the Mongol Rally – Did you guess?
Written by Giselle Borg Olivier on August 31, 2010 – 11:47 am | No Comment
Pangea Supercontinent finish the Mongol Rally – Did you guess?

August 25: We crossed the finish line last night at 7pm.  We are pretty excited to finally be here.
The team have reached their destination and made it to Mongolia in one piece on August 25, …

GFI Software Wins Six Best Channel Product Awards
Written by Giselle Borg Olivier on August 30, 2010 – 4:38 pm | No Comment
GFI Software Wins Six Best Channel Product Awards

GFI Software Wins Six Best Channel Product Awards
We’ve been awarded six Best Channel Product awards from Business Solutions Magazine in the August issue of the publication. GFI received recognition for the strength of its channel …

Common Reasons why Content Updates Fail in GFI MailEssentials (Part 1 of 3)
Written by Mohammed S Ali on August 30, 2010 – 3:20 pm | No Comment
Common Reasons why Content Updates Fail in GFI MailEssentials (Part 1 of 3)

Common reasons why content updates fail in GFI MailEssentials (Part 1 of 3)There can be various reasons why one or more GFI MailEssentials Anti-Spam modules may fail to download the latest updates files or to …

Have Email Archiving needs changed?
Written by Geert Claes on August 26, 2010 – 1:51 pm | 3 Comments
Have Email Archiving needs changed?

Email Archiving has been around for quite a while now and according to a 2009 study (The Radicati Group “E-Mail Archiving Market, 2009-2013“) the market is predicted to grow from $2.1 billion back in 2009 …

Is web security becoming more important than web filtering?
Written by Mohammed S Ali on August 25, 2010 – 3:24 pm | One Comment
Is web security becoming more important than web filtering?

Recently I was reading a very interesting article in a newspaper about the importance of web security in online banking. The editor reported about an incident that affected approximately 3000 personal bank accounts which caused …

How to stop archiving useless spam (Part 5)
Written by Mohammed S Ali on August 23, 2010 – 3:08 pm | No Comment
How to stop archiving useless spam (Part 5)

In the previous post emails have been copied from one to another database. The active spam retention policy ensures that emails which have been marked as spam will not be stored permanently in the new …

How to Control Cyber Slacking
Written by Emmanuel Carabott on August 20, 2010 – 9:51 am | 2 Comments
How to Control Cyber Slacking

Cyber slacking is a term used when employees use their work internet connection for personal reasons for excessive amounts of time. Cyber slacking can cause a number of problems, from the obvious loss of productivity …

How to stop archiving useless spam (Part 4)
Written by Mohammed S Ali on August 18, 2010 – 3:45 pm | No Comment
How to stop archiving useless spam (Part 4)

In my previous post I prepared the first steps required to move all emails except spam emails into the new GFI MailArchiver Archive Store. For this I have created a new Archive Store in GFI …

Software Reviewers Wanted
Written by Giselle Borg Olivier on August 16, 2010 – 11:41 am | 10 Comments
Software Reviewers Wanted

If you have a tech blog then this is for you!
We’re giving all tech bloggers the opportunity to write some great content for their blog by reviewing GFI WebMonitor™ – our internet monitoring and anti-virus …